WESTFIELD – With his term on Westfield State Univeristy’s governing board expiring, trustee chairman John F. Flynn ended Thursday night's meeting with a surprise endorsement of interim President Elizabeth Preston as the school’s next president.

Moments after the board approved $125,000 to finance the search for a successor to ex-president Evan S. Dobelle, Flynn suggested a simpler approach.

“To be candid, I’d like to throw the search out the window,” he said, turning to Preston. “We have a very good president right here.”

Flynn’s remarks came after board members presented him with a chair and read a proclamation praising him for a decade of service on the board, including the past year as chairman during the bitter legal battle with Dobelle.

Flynn and trustees Elizabeth Scheibel and Kevin Queenin were named as defendants in a lawsuit Dobelle filed after the board placed him on paid leave on Oct. 17, three weeks before he resigned.

Also named in the suit was state Higher Education Commissioner Richard M. Freeland, who successfully recommended the withholding of up to $2.2 million in funding to the school to dramatize his displeasure with Dobelle’s spending on international and domestic trips, hotels, restaurants, limousines and other items.